


Discovery

by CameraLux (TinCanTelephone)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bending (Avatar), Family, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Light Angst, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Sokka (Avatar)-centric, Sokka's boomerang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:46:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22964113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinCanTelephone/pseuds/CameraLux
Summary: How all the members of Team Avatar discover their bending abilities.(Yes, this is Sokka-centric. No, this is not an AU.)
Relationships: Bumi II & Sokka (Avatar), Hakoda & Sokka (Avatar)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 303





	Discovery

**Author's Note:**

> My take on the gAang discovering their bending abilities. Probably (definitely) been done before haha but I couldn't help myself

**Aang**

For Aang, it’s simple. The monks take one look and they know. Aang grows up without any uncertainty on the subject. For him, airbending is as natural as breathing. He never knows a life without it and however difficult anything else gets, that’s one thing that never is.

**Zuko**

For Zuko, nothing’s simple. He’s born early and doesn’t cry so much as whimper weakly, but the fire sages get to hold him before his mother, anxiously looking for indications of the child’s bending ability. Their verdict has Prince Ozai storming out of the room, setting the curtains and the closest fire sage’s robes on fire. Ursa’s in tears and takes the baby back, swearing to protect him from the poison of his father and his ambitions.

So Zuko spends the first six years of his life believing he’s a non-bender. It makes him an anomaly in a family that’s tried so hard for three generations to keep bending in the bloodline, but he’s too young to become bitter, and his mother makes sure to keep it that way. Determined to give him a skillset to call his own, she convinces Master Piandao to do a residency in the palace. Zuko quickly shows an aptitude and takes a childish sort of pride in his studies, so it’s more with fascination than jealousy that he watches Lu Ten train from the edge of the courtyard.

Years later, he still won’t know what compels him to stand up and start roughly imitating the motions, but the first time he does one completely there’s a spark and a small puff of smoke from the end of his fist.

Everyone in the courtyard goes silent, even Lu Ten’s impassive master staring at the prince in shock. Zuko, with barely an understanding of what’s just happened, allows himself to be swept along as the master sends for his parents and every fire sage he can find. For the first time, Ozai looks at him almost like he looks at Azula, and it clicks in Zuko’s mind that this is what he’s been missing.

But he struggles through lessons with Azula– she’s been bending since before she could walk and he’ll never be able to compare. When he’s alone meditating over a candle, bending makes him feel safe, and powerful. But mostly it just makes him feel angry and trapped. In training, he finds himself unable to find any satisfaction or ease in the movements, but under the disapproving eyes of his father,neither is he able to stop.

**Toph**

When Toph is born, Lao and Poppy don’t bother to consult anyone as to whether she could be a bender. If the girl can’t see, how can she possibly bend? It’s only after a temper tantrum in which the child destroys her bed, two vases, and a good portion of the ceiling that they employ the services of Master Yu, if only to keep her under control.

But like Aang, Toph is never unsure. Feeling and manipulating the earth is simply an extension of herself. Master Yu does his best, but the badger moles do better, and Toph surpasses her master in skill and expertise before she’s ten years old.

**Katara**

When Katara is born, there’s no one to consult. There haven’t been waterbenders in the Southern Water Tribe for 45 years. Kanna retains a stubborn hope that there will be another in her lifetime. Hakoda thinks it would be better if there wasn’t. It’s just what they don’t need, he reasons. Another way to make his tribe a massive target for the Fire Nation.

So he watches with a mixture of pride and fear and fascination as his three-year-old daughter toddles towards the pot of stew Kya’s stirring in the center of the igloo and holds up her hand. A thin stream of liquid snakes upwards and forms a tiny, shimmering sphere before falling with a splash and a hiss of steam onto the fire.

Katara laughs and claps her hands before being pulled away from the flames by her mother. Hakoda lets out a breath long and slow, trying to smile through the pounding of his heart in his throat.

“The spirits have blessed us, Hakoda,” Kanna says as Kya embraces his daughter, murmuring praise and planting kisses on her cheeks. “She’ll be the one to save our people.”

“She’s only a child,” he says, frowning at the thought of his baby bearing the burden of reviving a long-dead tradition and making herself a personal enemy of the fire nation. But he doesn’t have the heart to say anything more, not when Kya and Kanna look so happy and Katara is laughing in their arms.

So he sits back and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep this a secret, how long he’ll be able to keep her safe.

**Sokka**

Before he sees his sister bend, Sokka thinks it’s just something that happens in myths. To him, it seems a thing of the distant past, or something that only exists in Gran Gran’s stories in far-off places that don’t matter. He prefers to think about things that are real. Like the village, his canoe, and his father’s weapons. Those are the things that count during a war. Not magic water.

For a while, his sister’s weird abilities are easy to ignore, and sometimes he convinces himself they’re convenient accidents or freaks of nature. But it quickly becomes impossible, and every time Mom or Gran Gran see Katara move so much as a snowflake they go on and on about the revival of ancient traditions and how the Spirits have looked favorably upon them.

Despite himself, there’s an uncomfortable feeling that grows his stomach when he watches Katara watch the water off the edge of a canoe or over an ice fishing hole. It seem to speak to her in a way it doesn’t to him, and part of him begins to wonder if maybe he just isn’t listening hard enough.

One day while they’re playing, she accidentally brings a snowdrift down on top of him. He shoves her face in it after clambering out, and when she runs to tell on him to Mom and Gran Gran he hopes she’ll be punished for starting it. But instead they ask her how she moved the snow and if she can do it again, and titter about how remarkable it is that she’s taught this all to herself.

That night he can’t sleep, his stomach churning with that feeling he can’t quite name, so he puts on his mittens and coat and steals out of the igloo. The moon is full and bright, lighting his way as he walks across the ice. The gusts of freezing wind feel like blades on his face and take his breath away, but he presses on until he comes upon an ice fishing hole his father and Bato carved last week.

Brushing some of the snow aside, he kneels down next to it and peers into the still, black water. Steadying himself over the edge, he raises one hand over the hole and concentrates hard.

Katara once talked about how she can “feel the water without touching it,” and even though he laughed and made fun of her for it at the time, that’s what he tries to do now.

Wiggling his fingers inside his mitten, he stares hard at the water. _Come on, water. Move_.

Maybe he should try to imagine it? He closes his eyes and thinks back to the first time Katara waterbended, and visualizes a stream of water rising from the fishing hole and forming a perfect orb under his fingers.

For half a second, he believes that it’s worked and he opens his eyes in excitement, only for his heart to fall when he sees the water has remained flat and disobedient.

In a flash of anger and frustration, he slaps the water with his hand, feeling a grim satisfaction as it splashes onto the ice. _Take that, water_.

But then as if to spite him, another gust of wind blows across the ice, cutting through his sodden mitten. He can’t hold back a yelp as he yanks it off and shoves his hands into his pockets, trying to rub the feeling back into his fingers. He tosses the mitten aside and watches in dismay as ice begins to form along the outside, like Katara’s tea when she’s angry.

The feeling in his stomach suddenly bubbles into his chest and he realizes all at once what it is. _Jealousy_.

_It’s not fair,_ he thinks, squeezing his eyes shut against the sudden tears. _Why did the Spirits pick her? Why not me?_

The wind blows harder and he begins to shiver. Shoulders hunched and roughly wiping the wetness from his eyes, he shuffles back to their igloo and sits on his bed next to Katara’s. She’s fast asleep, her face turned towards the moonlight.

He flops down on the bed and takes a deep breath. What did Gran Gran say? _Katara will be the one to save our people._ What does that make him?

_Useless_ , the bitter voice inside him says. He may be the chief’s son, and he’ll be a warrior when he grows up, but how will that ever compare to his sister the waterbender? What good will he ever be in the face of all that power?

He doesn’t manage to sleep for a long time.

Sokka wakes up late the next morning, and Katara’s already gotten up. He can hear her and Gran Gran moving around in the next room, cooking breakfast, but for once he doesn’t feel so eager to join them. After last night, he doesn’t think he can bear watching her clumsily bend tea from the kettle into her cup, although that feeling is quickly followed by shame.

He squeezes his eyes shut and pulls the blankets over his head. He hates feeling this bothered by things so out of his control, and hates that it makes him feel so small. All the emotions swirling around in his mind pool unpleasantly in his stomach again, and he almost feels physically ill. For a minute he wonders if he could fake a cough and have an excuse to stay in bed all day, hiding from everything that makes him feel this way.

Then he hears the heavy footsteps of his father in the doorway. “I know you’re under there, Sokka.”

“Go away,” he says without lifting the blankets. “I don’t feel good.”

“Is that so,” his father says, in a way Sokka suspects means he’s not fooling anyone. “I suppose that’s what happens when you take a midnight walk out on the ice.”

Something thunks onto the floor next to his bed and Sokka can’t help it, he pulls back the blankets to look. It’s his mitten, frozen solid after all night in the cold.

He looks up at his father, half hoping he has no idea what he was trying to do last night, and half hoping he does, because then Sokka would be spared from explaining it to him.

But his father’s face doesn’t reveal anything, he just says, “Get up, Son. Eat some breakfast, then come with me.”

He leaves without waiting for a response, but curiosity and the thought of time spent alone with his dad is enough to banish the unpleasantness from Sokka’s stomach. He doesn’t hesitate to get out of bed and make quick work of breakfast.

His father’s waiting outside the igloo, and they start walking at a brisk pace away from the village. Sokka has a million questions, but they’re walking fast and he has to save his breath. They stop as the ice flattens out on top of a glacier in a massive expanse that seems to extend in every direction. It’s utterly empty, except for wind blowing in from the north.

Sokka can’t stop himself any longer. “What’re we doing here?”

“I want to show you something,” his father says. He pulls something out of a sheath on his back and holds it up. “Do you know what this is?”

“Is it a weapon?” Sokka thinks he’s seen it around the igloo, but he doesn’t know what it does. It’s not long or pointy like a spear, heavy like a club, or sharp like a knife. It looks like a bent, flat stick, although it’s finely carved out of whale-walrus bone.

“It can be,” his father says.

“How?”

“Watch this.” His father turns so he’s facing into the wind, holding the stick by one end in his right hand. Then, with a flick of his wrist, throws it across the ice.

Sokka watches with wide eyes as it spins through the air, and can’t hold back a gasp when its path changes and turns, so it flies in a smooth arc to be caught in his father’s other hand.

“How did you do that?”

“This is a boomerang.” He brings it down so Sokka can hold it.

“Oh, it’s not really flat.”

“That’s right. And that’s why it curves when you throw it.”

_Curves…_ “It bent!” He holds the boomerang up to the light and tries to keep from jumping up and down. “Dad, you’re a _weapon bender!_ ”

His father chuckles. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Let me do it!” He holds the boomerang just like his father did and throws as hard as he can.

It buries itself in the snow a few feet away. For a moment he’s afraid this is another kind of magic he simply _can’t do_ , but then he realizes his father’s laughing.

“Good first try, Sokka,” he says, bringing the boomerang back. “But just like waterbending, this is a special skill that takes a lot of practice, so let me show you how to do it step by step, okay?” 

Sokka doesn’t manage to make the boomerang come back that day, or the next. Or the next, or the next. But that doesn’t stop him from taking it out every day to practice. Most of the time his father comes with him, but even when he’s busy Sokka goes out on the ice alone and tries again and again and again. He spends so much time on the glacier he gets snow blindness, which makes his mother fuss and scold and earns him two days in bed with a headache and burning eyes, but he doesn’t give up.

The first time it comes back to him, he races to the igloo and tells everyone in his family. The first time it comes back and he _catches it_ , he tells the entire village. His father helps him build snowmen topped with old fire nation helmets and he starts practicing with a target. It’s much harder to hit than he anticipated, and he still hasn’t managed it the first time he throws a boomerang at a _real_ firebender. The day his mother dies.

Sokka’s memories of the months after that day become a blur of grief and pain. Katara and Gran Gran cry a lot, Katara almost every night, and his father seems to withdraw. Once Sokka thinks he sees him cry, kneeling at the edge of the water after the funeral, but then he stands and goes over to talk to the warriors.

He starts spending more and more time with them, talking about the war. He never comes out to the glacier anymore, but Sokka spends more time there than ever, practicing and practicing. He vividly remembers the battle that day, the way his boomerang fell uselessly on the snow at the soldiers’ feet, and resolves that will never happen again.

Eventually, he starts hitting his target almost every time, sometimes even while running if the wind’s just right. But he’s still left behind when his father leads the rest of the warriors away to war, charged with protecting the village.

So he practices. Every day until his arms are sore, until he can hit the target throwing with his right hand or his left, while running or standing still. Until it feels like a part of him, until he knows its path backwards and forwards, no matter where the wind is coming from or how strong it is.

Mostly it feels like a thankless, useless exercise with no one to impress except Gran Gran and Katara, who mostly just scold him for not helping out around the village, and the younger children, who don’t really seem to grasp the point.

But it’s all worth it the first time he hits something that’s not a snowman, for the look on the Fire Prince’s face when it comes back and strikes his helmet broadside.

That first boomerang gets a lot of use during the war, until it’s lost over the Wulong Forest. It breaks his heart a little bit, and he never forgets the feel of that first one, even after his second, third, and fourth. But no matter the iteration, his boomerang becomes his _signature_ , his _thing_ – the demonstration he gives when he’s recognized in the streets, what he pulls out when Zuko gets a little too smug about his swordsmanship, what he throws into the night air at nothing when he’s got too much on his mind.

It’s what he thinks of one day on Air Temple Island the first time Kya waterbends and he catches Bumi staring hard into the fountain.

“Hey, Boom-Boom,” he says, crouching down next to his nephew.

“Hey.” Bumi doesn’t look up, doesn’t say anything else, but he doesn’t have to. Sokka knows what he’s thinking.

“How about we take a little field trip?”

Bumi shrugs.

“Come on.” He claps the kid on his shoulder. “Just the two of us. We don’t have to ask your mom.” Katara will yell at him later, but he doesn’t care. This is something he has to do.

He takes Bumi on his sailboat to the far side of Yue Bay, and then they hike up a low hill above the city, where the trees thin and there’s a large, open field that extends in every direction.

“What’re we doing here?” Bumi whines, and Sokka lets out a breath as his mind flashes back to that first time on the glacier.

He reaches over his shoulder into the sheath that’s always on his back and pulls out a boomerang– not his current one, but a smaller, lighter one from his late teens. Something a child could learn to throw.

He smiles down at his nephew, who’s watching him with equal parts suspicion and anticipation, and turns into the wind. “I want to show you something.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading/kudos/comments!! 
> 
> If you're into multifandom hell I'm on tumblr at [cats-and-metersticks](https://cats-and-metersticks.tumblr.com/) :D


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